


December on the Outside

by Odamaki



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Friendship, Gift Giving, Local man attempts emotions for sake of best friend, Post-EW, Preventer AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28670160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: Christmas. Wufei understands the concept, in theory. It’s a Christian festival now mainly about shopping, with some guff about finding the true spirit of family and happiness tacked on. It’s something both sentimental and aspirational, which to Wufei summarises Duo in a nutshell. Duo is famously a people person in the exact way that Wufei is not, and Christmas is very much a people occasion. An occasion that Duo's not getting this year unless Wufei does something about it. Armed with 24 hours and an awful list of suggestions from the Internet, Wufei's on a mission to deliver a last-minute holiday.(Written for Trickzill as part of the Gundam Wing Holiday Gift Exchange 2020. Thanks to 2pcb for beta-reading!)
Relationships: Chang Wufei & Duo Maxwell
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16
Collections: GW Holiday Gift Exchange 2020





	December on the Outside

December, though they hadn’t known it. On Earth, the year had become a blur in which a long, wet summer had dragged its tail through a forgettable autumn before dying as a wet winter. In space all that was irrelevant.

December 22nd and the transfer shuttle touches down late at Dover, leaving them in the liminal space of a parking lot at midnight, fumbling for the rental fob in a haze of disinterested rain. Wufei drives. It’s his turn; Duo piloted the red eye from L2 to L1. It’s been a long series of hops from the colonies back to dirtside, which they should have predicted, but they had forgotten about the seasonal rush.

They return to London, rather than the much longer trip to Brussels. It’s too late for the last train, and London with all its old bones and crumbling grandeur has become their base of preference regardless. The city is convenient enough to HQ that they can be there within hours, but far enough removed that they can breathe. The darkness beyond the motorway lights bleeds away, becoming brighter high rises and industry. Presently, Duo rouses, his cheek pressed on one fist against the door and grunts at something on the horizon.

“We should stop somewhere,” Wufei says, once certain that Duo is actually awake. “There’s no food in the house.”

“Yeah,” Duo replies. He twists his head to read a billboard covered in snowmen as it passes and grunts again.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Wufei doesn’t bother to press it. They’ve been working together for years now. After Sally moved up the chain, Wufei thought he’d be working solo for the rest of his career, that no one could fill her space, and then Duo had rolled in on the heels of chaos and in that haphazard way of his, simply changed the space to fit him. This far along in their partnership, Wufei’s got a handle on the other man’s moods. Usually easy going, there are just two things that make Duo poor company, and one of them is sleep deprivation.

They pull off the ring road into the lot of the hypermart, which is surprisingly occupied given the hour. Duo slinks out the passenger side, hard to see in the dull orange lights, a shrug-shouldered shape all in grey.

“You can stay in the car,” Wufei offers, but Duo’s already sloping away towards the carts.

Entering the store is like taking a slap to the face. Noise. Colour. People. Lights, lights and lights.

They’ve been on a flight at the arse-end of service that they had almost to themselves and a long stretch of bare motorway, and this is the anathema to that entirely. “Hell,” Duo croaks, looking startled. In Wufei’s opinion, ‘hell’ sums it up nicely.

“There’s a tree in here,” Wufei says, hearing the stupidity of the comment, but there is. A colossus of a tree, in all its shoddy plastic glory covered in store branded whosits and whatsits that defy description, and lights flashing with enforced jollity. The cheapness is accentuated by the fact it is piled around with bargains inviting them to ‘buy now and get one festive free’. Wufei rounds the tree gripping the trolley and notes that the offer is limited to practical items such as a polar bear named Rory holding a can of chocolates, knock-off prosecco, pretzels, shortbread, and satsumas protruding through their nets like growths.

“List,” Duo says. He has a pinched look on his face that Wufei can’t describe. Stomachache? Headache? There’s music playing; that particularly tinny variety that sticks a needle in the frontal lobe faster than lobotomy. A crooning young man is singing;

_Christmas in the stars,_  
_Come with me and we’ll fly away,_  
_Let’s all raise a glass,_  
_Good tidings now to everyone_  
_Between Jupiter and Mars,_  
_It’s Christmas in the stars._

“Just basics,” Wufei replies. Duo nods and strides ahead, leaving Wufei to glide after him. The inanity of the lyrics aside, Wufei reflects, did the writer intend to exclude everyone in the colonies, or was that simply coincidence? Were good tidings extended to people on Mars? If so, Zechs would be in luck for once.

The trolley rattles as Duo drops two cans of soup inside of it. “How long are we staying? Two days? Three?”

“More like five,” Wufei says, once he’s thought about it. He has the usual sinking feeling at the thought of Christmas Eve and its associated memorials. He holds little remorse for his involvement in the uprising, but he still can’t quite divorce himself from the messy emotions surrounding it. “The holiday falls right before the weekend. We won’t get a meeting until the 28th.”

“Shit.”

“You were complaining last time about not having enough time,” Wufei points out, over the sound of soup rattling. Duo rolls his eyes, indicating that they’ve entered the dramatic teenage part of his bad mood. Wufei opts for damage control. “Split up. Get the vegetables and milk, I'll get dry goods. Meet you back at the end of this aisle in 10 minutes.”

“Five,” Duo counters and leaves.

“Ten,” Wufei mutters. He’s not playing Grand Theft Auto around a fucking store. The aisles are largely empty save for staff restocking anyway, and he makes it around in a more reasonable 7 minutes by which time the annoying song has swapped out for some saccharine, but mostly unintelligible recording of a children’s choir.

Duo is already at the automatic checkout and nearly finished by the time Wufei gets in line, and they nod to one another above the short queue. Wufei catches up to him outside, tapping away at the vending machine.

“You’re buying more of that crap? What a waste of money.”

“Sure am, and shut your face, it’s only a buck a go. It’s small kicks,” Duo says, pressing his thumb on the button with some force. The machine whirrs and spits out a plastic pod at the bottom. Wufei wrinkles its nose.

“You have dozens of those things.”

“They’re collectibles, Wufei, that’s the point,” Duo argues, splitting the pod in two and pulling the toy out. He groans. “Dammit.”

It’s a plastic model of a van. Not a toy but a model, and not just any van, but some crapped out hunk of junk with a busted fender and ivy creeping up the side. Wufei can’t make sense of the thing’s existence in the world. Who designs this shit? Who pitched this to a marketing board? Who claimed they could flog plastic models of car crashes to the world?

As for Duo’s obsession with them, he can only chalk that up to the same grim sense of humour that called itself ‘Shinigami’.

Duo’s already pushing buttons again, tapping his bank card, the van discarded neatly on the ledge beside the machine. The next pod tumbles into Duo’s hand and disgorges another van to another groan.

“I just want the sports car,” Duo says, dumping the plastic.

“I just want you to stop putting them on the dashboard,” Wufei replies, steering Duo back towards the car. “It’s bad luck.”

“One, you don’t believe in bad luck and two, I reckon it’s good luck. Like reverse psychology.”

“You can’t use reverse psychology on probability.”

“Then you can’t apply bad luck either,” Duo says, smirking.

Wufei clicks his tongue with feigned irritation. Duo’s smirk is a good sign. It means his mood is lifting. “Stop talking crap and get in the car.”

It’s not far back to the house. It’s cold inside from more than a month of standing empty, and the lights flicker as a freight train rumbles past, but closing the door creates a sense of security. Not home, but safe territory. Wufei lugs shopping bags into the kitchen as Duo stretches off up the stairs.

“Do you want something to eat?” Wufei calls after him.

Duo leans over the bannisters, one hand already pulling the threads of his braid loose. “Yeah. I’ll come down in a second.”

He sighs as he vanishes up into the dark and then the landing light flicks on. Wufei unloads groceries, tossing his own pack of belongings into the downstairs bedroom. Upstairs the toilet flushes, and Wufei catches the muffled, tuneless noise of Duo whistling.

“Jetlag,” he mutters, pushing pizza into the oven.

What else would it be?  
___

It’s December 23rd and it’s not jetlag. After another full day of pissy behaviour from his housemate, Wufei is content to say it’s not jetlag. At the moment, Duo has taken his grouching into the garage. It’s his workspace, the same as the extension is Wufei’s, but whereas Wufei has a modest collection of books and a desk to entertain his hours, Duo’s garage contains nothing but a motorbike being dismantled into increasingly small parts.

At least he isn’t putting them on the dashboard.

It’s four o’clock and Duo hasn’t even bothered to emerge for lunch, so it’s something serious. Wufei ruminates on the matter as he fills the kettle. The kitchen sides on to the garage and he can hear the intermittent thumping of Duo hitting something metallic, along with the more persistent throb of loud music.

Wufei frowns.

It’s the day before Christmas Eve, and there’s nothing to do until after the holiday when the office reopens. Technically they’re a 24-hour business, but really only for emergencies. Une has expressly stated she has no wish to see their faces anywhere near her until the 27th of December and Wufei draws the line at tracking the woman down to her own house. Mariemaia’s there, after all.

Moving that thought aside, Wufei tracks the day back to breakfast. They haven’t done a lot and he’s so far not noticed any portents of disaster.

Duo had emerged hours late into Wufei’s morning with a spring back in his step. He’d made pancakes and eaten them whilst playing games on his phone. Wufei had at this stage discovered that they’d forgotten to buy any kitchen sponges and that there were none left, and Duo had been booted out the door to go burn off the pancakes and buy some.

He’d come home again about an hour later, sweaty, bearing sponges and oddly quieter. Wufei had put this down to pelting up and down the hills of north London but perhaps he’d misjudged. Before the dirty suds had finished draining out of the kitchen sink, Duo had shut himself in the bathroom and hadn’t reappeared for over an hour. This was nothing so unusual; the man had a lot of hair and was also prone to forgetting meaningless things like time when parked on the toilet scrolling the internet.

But he’d come out and gone straight in the garage.

Wufei spoons leaf tea into a teapot, frowning harder.

So had something happened?

Duo is not necessarily a man of predictable habit, but there are only so many routes to jog around here, especially not if you intend to wind up at the corner shop. He must have routed through the park and up to the reservoirs, looped the water and returned along the main road.

A detective to his core, Wufei goes to look at Duo’s shoes to confirm. It’s all there in black and white; or more accurately, brown. Fluvial soil; definitely the reservoir.

Behind him the kettle whistles and Wufei drops the sneaker, returning to fill the teapot.

The main road? Nothing along there to take offense at. Nothing but a motor service yard and a handful of competing churches.

Wufei stops, watching the steam whisper up from the spout of the teapot.

Ah.

Churches.

They have never done Christmas together before. Not unless you count the uprising, and as that was exceptionally lacking in hot dinners, sparkly lights and fuzzy feelings, Wufei doesn’t. He edges around thinking too closely about the Eve wars. He supposes that all is well that ends well. It did usher in a new kind of peace on Earth. And off Earth too, which is one up on the baby Jesus.

More clanking from the garage, followed by swearing.

Come to it, Wufei doesn’t think Duo’s been on Earth at Christmas since the Eve War. They usually go their separate ways and drift back in line after New Years. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe all this huffing and grumping is symptomatic of the absence of a petite mechanic and the smell of engines roasting in an open scrapyard. Which is another can of worms Wufei doesn’t want to open. Duo seems to spend his free time with Hilde voluntarily, but any relationship going on between them is off the radar, and Wufei has always taken it as read that they have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ arrangement about their personal lives.

Or at least, Duo does. Wufei’s not sure he has any kind of personal life worth mentioning. He tips tea from the pot into his cup and retreats to his room, where Duo’s anguish is blessedly more muffled.

Christmas.

Wufei understands the concept, in theory. It’s a Christian festival now mostly overrun by commercials, with some sentiment tacked on about finding the true spirit of family and happiness. Or some other crap. His understanding gets muddier where Catholic doctrine becomes involved. It hadn’t been a big feature of his curriculum, after all. He assumes it’s much like the rest of the faith in which you spend the day feeling guilty, the chief difference being that you had a chance to avoid hell by bribing the baby Jesus with oranges. Or was it sheep?

Or drums?

There are not many sheep in L2, so probably oranges.

In any case, it’s something both sentimental and aspirational, which to Wufei summarises Duo in a nutshell. Wufei went to war for justice and revenge; Duo says he did it to put smiles back on faces. How could anyone like that not buy into jingle bells and gift giving?

Wufei has an understanding, without any particulars, that Duo’s life prior to now has been more austere and miserable than his own - that he is magnetised towards the softer side of life that leaves Wufei itching in discomfort. Duo is famously a people person in the exact way that Wufei is not, and Christmas is very much a people occasion.

Wufei swallows a hot mouthful of tea and it sticks in his throat.

“Damn.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, hearing the thumping in the garage reach new depths of bass and sighs.

Flicking open his laptop, he types in ‘Christmas for 2 people’. After a moment’s thought, he corrects this to ‘Christmas for 2 people - cheap’.

One of the first things to pop up is titled ‘How to have a Fabulous Christmas for Two on a Budget’, which gives him instant hives but as everything else is adverts, Wufei clicks it, pen poised over a notepad. He immediately regrets everything.

_1 - Decorate your tree with named ornaments!_

Wufei writes down ‘tree?’ and then immediately scratches through it. He’s not buying a tree for 3 days of use. It’s just not economic. He wonders if a branch would suffice or if that’s just mean. Can you have ornaments without the tree? Are they permitted to be anonymous?

Bad suggestion. Move on.

_2 - Wear cosy matching pyjamas._

No. Wufei shakes his head at the very notion. What self respecting adult matches nightwear? Besides, he doesn’t wear any if he can avoid it.

_3 - Combine your festive playlist into one long list of hits!_

This is a bold assertion that Wufei has any kind of playlist that could be classed as ‘festive’. The garage booms on the other side of the house, very unfestively. Skip.

_4 - Stock up on booze._

Wufei copies this to the notepad in block capitals. Finally, sound advice. Duo is generally a lairy drunk and easy going without getting messy. He has that much self control. Wufei taps his pen and then underlines the sentence.

_5 - Get naked!_

Wufei throws his pen down. This is ridiculous. Rising, he downs the rest of his tea and reaches for his jacket. Christmas. Fine. He doesn’t need the internet to tell him how to do Christmas. It’s easy. It’s buy one get one festive free.  
____

The supermarket is worse by a factor of a thousand in daytime hours. The same music, only louder. The same bright lights, the same cluttered aisles but now crammed with the bumper car queues of carts and people.

Everyone is stressed.

Wufei hunches his shoulders and sidles between dripping trolley-loads topped with alternately sticky or screaming children.

He retreats into the packets aisle, which isn’t as crowded, and which appeals to something innate in his colonial nature. Instant mashed potato has always belonged to space more than Earth.

Wufei has no shopping list beyond a vague idea in his head. The internet has suggested that the appropriate feeding regimen for a single day and a single adult should involve a cooked breakfast, a three course dinner with sides, and ample snacking - roughly quadruple the calories a normal person should consume within any 24-hour period.

Unfortunately, few of the recommended ingredients are to be found lurking in the packets aisle. Wufei lurks near a shelf of Mac ‘n’ Cheese, and denies the accruing panic. He tosses pancake mix, stuffing mix and canned white sauce into the basket and then as more families begin encroaching on his space, beats a retreat to the freezers.  
The turkey section is brimming with the solid shrink-wrapped boulders of ex-poultry. Wufei stares at them and has to confess there and then that he’d had no idea how big a turkey was. The largest might be more appropriately labelled ‘ostrich’. Even the smallest is about the size of his head and would be a challenge even for their robust appetites.

The chicken section is conversely stripped bare.

“Shit.”

Surely it doesn’t matter if the meat is breaded? Duo’s not that fussy. Wufei tracks down the freezers full of pre-prepared meats and finds a baffling array of familiar things forced into bizarre shapes. Prawn toast shaped like stars. A chicken nugget ‘tree’. He eyeballs a packet of frozen spring rolls with suspicion, which look like they’re stuffed with flavourless mush even from the artful photography on the packet. There is a box of 'meatball lollipops' and Wufei stops and stares into the void for a moment, wondering what satay had ever done to have deserved such gross infantalisation.

Absolutely not.

His eye catches on something at the end of the cabinet as he passes towards the booze aisle and he pauses. ‘Christmas in a box’ it says. Wufei pulls a packet up to eye level and examines it.

It’s Christmas in a box. A three-course dinner consisting of a smoked salmon and cheese roulade, turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and a single serving of Christmas pudding. It even states that a cracker is included, which Wufei finds unnecessary but maybe you’re supposed to dip it in the gravy.

It couldn’t scream ‘sad old bastard’ any louder if it tried.

Wufei drops it back and abandons the basket for good measure, concluding that he has both had enough and that there must be a way to do Christmas that doesn’t involve him cooking.  
In fact, why should he cook? Let someone else do the fucking shopping, cooking and washing up afterwards.

He stalks off towards the back of the store, phone out, already searching for a list of restaurants open on Christmas Eve.

Eventually, Wufei emerges free of the store into the pinching air, with nothing more than a bag clanking with bottles. Stock up on booze? Check. Reservation? Check. Mission Christmas is off to a start at last. He shifts the heavy bag to his other hand, feeling pleased with himself. Now all he needs to do is drag Duo to the restaurant tomorrow and no one can ever again accuse him of not making any effort in his partnerships.

Behind him a machine beeps and clunks. Wufei turns to watch a mother and child wander off towards the cars, the boy waving at a plastic egg.  
____  
____

Christmas Eve, and Wufei has the impression that Duo is watching him. The feeling dawns on Wufei some point after breakfast whilst watching the news, and continues the remainder of the day. Nothing overt, but Duo does not retreat into the garage and instead idles around in the living room, doing nothing.

This has happened before, prior to Duo delivering petty bad news such as the time he’d broken the toilet. In fact, Duo drifts around the house after him with such an odd expression when he thinks Wufei isn’t looking, that Wufei finds himself scouting around the house for mishaps.

They argue about about the oven, where Wufei finds trace amounts of burnt cheese suggesting late night pizza.

They argue next about some hypotheticals regarding engines, then find relief in Duo stomping upstairs to hog the shower and Wufei to his cave to angrily read books. It takes him four chapters to remember that Duo is unhappy and to forgive him for it.

Perhaps it takes Duo two shampoos to do the same, because he returns downstairs with wet hair and unspoken contrition, and cleans the oven.

Things are back to status quo by the time it comes to get ready to leave the house, which is why Wufei is surprised to find Duo fussy again. He hadn’t had any specific expectations, but the stress is an unwelcome surprise.

Duo can’t seem to focus on the simple task of getting dressed for dinner. It’s not even fancy; Wufei has explicitly stated this twice, and still Duo is dithering. He can’t find his socks. He can’t find his keys.

“I have keys,” Wufei snaps from the bottom of the stairs. “Just get a coat.”

Duo doesn’t want to get a coat and can’t find his jacket.

By the time they actually get out the door, Wufei is in the mood to slam it. He settles for pulling it shut with a clump and rattling the keys more than is needed.

When he turns around, Duo is looking down the road, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched.

“I told you to get a coat. Don’t complain to me if you get cold.”

“As if,” Duo replies, in tones just short of sulky.

Wufei shakes his head. Brat. He brushes past Duo onto the road and sets off towards the bus stop, clicking his tongue for Duo to follow. He scuttles up a moment later, breath puffing warm smoke in the cold.

“Where are we going?” Duo asks, oddly urgent.

“This way,” Wufei replies, unable to resist sarcasm. “I thought that was obvious.”

“But why this way? Restaurant’s the other way?”

“What restaur-? No, not the Jade,” Wufei stops, Duo’s behaviour suddenly making some kind of sense. The Jade is Wufei’s favourite haunt up this end of the city. It does the huǒguō hot pot he likes and the giant dumplings Duo likes, but it’s not exactly Christmassy. “I booked something...somewhere else. More traditional.”

“Oh.” Duo rocks on his heels. They’ve made it only as far as the corner, and the lights from the Christmas tree outside the church flicker red and yellow warning lights across Duo’s face. “Like… traditional how?”

“Like Christmas. It’s Christmas. We’re doing Christmas,” Wufei says with increasing discomfort. Duo’s face is not exactly painted with joy. He’s chewing his lip and frowning. “It’s a nice place. They have booths. I thought we could have dinner and drinks there, and it would be nicer than being stuck in the house. It’s by the river. The fireworks and things will probably be visible.”

“Oh,” Duo says again. Wufei waits, but he says nothing else and slowly Wufei gestures along the road by way of question. Duo walks on. They get as far as the next corner, and then abruptly Duo stops again.

“Fuck! Sorry. Ah, shit. Nope. Sorry, ‘Fei, I’m really sorry but I can’t do this.”

The worst of it is, he really is sorry. Duo exudes sorry, even while setting his jaw and digging in his heels. He shrugs.

“We could do something else? We could, I don’t know, drive out somewhere or just walk around or-I don’t mind, but I’m not doing that. That’s the last thing I’m doing tonight.” With frustration, Duo adds, "Fuck’s sake, Wufei, you’re from L5. Since when did you give a crap about Christmas?”

“Since I had to put up with you going around the house with a face like a smacked arse,” Wufei retorts. “You’ve been sulking about it since Une told us to delay debrief.”

Duo chokes, and then reels back, expressing a sigh like a steam engine, running his hand hard down his face.

“It’s not my fault you can’t go to L2 this year.”

“I know. That’s not- Just, rain check. Time out.” Duo reaches out and tugs at Wufei’s elbow, bringing his attention to the fact that they are starting a row on the street outside a church where people are starting to arrive for service. Duo jerks his head towards the house. “Let’s just…Please?”

Too perturbed to even be irritated, Wufei follows.

Duo doesn’t look up again until after they’re back inside the house, in their hall with the crappy carpet and the smell of oven cleaner.

“I need an explanation,” Wufei says, dropping his keys on their hook.

“I know. But…I need,” Duo vagues vaguely towards the second floor of the house. “A minute. Words. Why don’t you just… go and order takeout or something. I’m going to hang up my jacket.”

And he goes upstairs, leaving Wufei stranded on the doormat.

Shit.

Wufei heads for the kitchen with the feeling of guilt putting its teeth on his nerve endings. Somehow he’s managed to get this badly wrong. It feels surreal to pull up the takeaway app on his phone and punch in an order, blindly agreeing to all the suggested sides.

‘What did I get wrong?’

Duo had seemed... offended by the offer and with the benefit of hindsight, it seems absurd and arrogant to Wufei that he’d ever presumed to know what Duo would want. And Duo’s right. He doesn’t give a crap about Christmas; it’s never been a part of his life and he’s never had any intention of making it so. He wonders if Duo is angry with him, which is a new kind of unsettling, because in all the long history of their butting heads and arguing, Duo’s never been truly angry or disappointed with him. Not without being on opposing sides of a conflict, and even then it hadn’t been personal. It hadn’t been cultural.

“Hey,” Duo says, unexpectedly close and Wufei startles like a cat, managing to both drop and catch his phone with one hand and put up a fist with the other in the same split second.

Duo laughs.

“Damn you, Maxwell!”

Duo’s grin circles him, unrepentant for making him jump. “Sorry. We got anything to drink?”

Wufei smooths back his hair and jerks his chin towards the fridge. “There’s beer. Or I have -”

“Beer,” Duo interrupts. “I don’t want to make this a hard liquor conversation.”

Conversation? Wufei’s tongue glues to the roof of his mouth and it’s with effort he manages to unstick it to say, “I didn’t mean to overstep your boundaries. I apologise.”

Duo raises his eyebrows, his lips already at the neck of a bottle and then gives a little smile that makes Wufei’s stomach knot.

“It’s ok. I get why you were being all weird. I got my wires crossed as well.”

Wufei can only respond to this with a highly intellectual grunt of confusion. Duo sighs.

“Listen, it’s stupid, ok? You’re gonna be mad and say I'm overreacting and it’s ‘cos I can’t explain it too great.”

“Try?” Wufei splutters, pushing past Duo to get at the beer. He cracks the cap off and points towards the table. Duo rolls his eyes but goes, planting himself in the best seat for any serious discussion, right under the ‘Sexy Burritoes’ wall calendar. Wufei resignedly sits opposite.

“Ok. What happened?”

Duo twists his mouth up. “So the thing is - basically?” He wrinkles his nose and then uses his hand to emphasise when he says, “I hate Christmas.”

Wufei waits. Duo looks at him. Wufei waits. Duo shrugs.

“And?” Wufei demands.

“And nothing! That’s it! I just really, really fucking hate Christmas, ok? The whole thing. I hate the stupid lights, I hate the trees, I hate the everything.”

“You,” Wufei says slowly, busy adjusting his perspective of Duo Maxwell entirely, “Hate a holiday that is entirely focussed on eating and getting free stuff?”

“That’s just it!” Duo explodes, “It’s not! It’s not free! Christmas is for rich fucks and their big, rich-ass families, and it’s a big, stinking lie. I mean, that shit is.” He waves a hand towards the door as if there’s a crowd of people out there about to beat the door down and wish him a Merry Christmas. “And that’s why I don’t want to do it.”

Wufei pauses, sensing the edges of some deep and genuine hurt.

“Ok,” he says, “Fine. Then we won’t do it. You’re right, I have no personal interest in it anyway. I ordered from the Jade. It should be here soon.”

Duo coughs on his beer. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?”

“You’re not mad?” Duo presses, “I didn’t really explain anything.”

“You hate Christmas. What more is there to explain?” Wufei says, pragmatically, avoiding Duo’s eye when the other man smiles again.

“Really?”

“Keep asking me and I’ll smack you upside the head.”

“Ok?” Duo’s lips twitch at the corners and then he reaches across the table, clinking their bottles together. “Thanks.”

“Trust you to be such a drama queen,” Wufei complains. “Next time I’ll save myself the trouble and lock you in the garage.”

Duo scoffs. “I’m a drama queen? Excuse you, I was pretty sure you were being weird ‘cos it’s… y’know. Eve.”

Wufei swallows and slows. “Ah,” he says, the act of his annoyance dying on the stage. “I see.”

“Doesn’t matter. Forget I mentioned it.”

“I’m getting plates out,” Wufei says, “We can eat on the couch.”

Duo takes the change of subject and rolls with it, “You wanna watch a movie or something?”

Wufei grunts assent and they make an unnecessary effort tramping about the flat getting ready for the meal. They squabble over what to watch, because they always squabble over what to watch, and it makes the strangeness of the evening feel a little less acute. They settle on something they’ve seen before, involving motor racing and spies. Wufei likes it for the bikes and trick riding. Duo likes it because the spies are idiots and he enjoys picking their methods apart. Wufei likes it because he enjoys Duo’s scorn for the characters. Duo likes it because Wufei doesn’t know it, but he makes kid-in-a-toy-shop eyes at the bikes.

The food arrives, and Wufei insists on plates and bowls because he dressed for dinner and they’re supposed to be sharing. Duo avoids such logic by getting changed back into sweats and a t-shirt and piling his share into his half of the carton of rice.

“It’s better this way. The flavours mix.”

“You’re an animal. You’re an offence to 3000 years of food culture.”

“Who are you kidding? We’re spacers, baby. The only culture we’ve got is second hand or grows in a vat.”

Wufei doesn’t deign to answer that.

The food inevitably outlasts the appetite. Duo sprawls belly up on the couch, kitty-corner to where Wufei is sinking into the armchair. Wufei can see him in the corner of his left eye when Duo moves, and the gap between the curtains in the corner of his right eye. A sodden kind of quiet begins to creep over them, Wufei’s attention supposedly fixed on the movie, but distracted to both sides and to his inward thoughts.

The characters mutter at one another in a poorly lit bar; Wufei has stopped listening. Outside, there are explosions. The fireworks crackle and echo around the house and Wufei sees but does not take in the flowers of pink and blue they make in the night sky. He does not think of gunfire, strangely enough, but the smell of the oil on the gun clip and the noise it made being loaded into Altron.

“You ok?” Duo says, loud compared to the movie.

Wufei blinks, tilting his bottle to check how much he’s drunk. “I’m still going on this one.”

There’s a pause that makes him look up, and catches an expression from Duo of both wry fondness and concern. Just for a moment.

“I meant,” Duo says, flicking his eyes back to the TV, “You ok?”

Oh. That.

Wufei twitches one shoulder in a very small shrug. Maybe. Maybe not. Duo turns the volume up using the remote, and then glances at him again. “You wanna go somewhere?”

“Where?” Wufei asks, not expecting the suggestion, but Duo also looks stumped.

“I dunno. Thought you wanted to go somewhere.”

“Here’s fine. I don’t want to go out.”

Duo’s looking at him again. A proper eyeballing, picking at Wufei.

“What?”

“I’m just thinking. You didn’t want to go out tonight, did you? But you were prepared to anyway.”

Wufei stares hard at the TV. His chest feels hot and prickly, the way it always does when he gets caught in his pretence. Some sort of misplaced shame of being considered human; a means of self-preservation that’s gotten out of hand.

“Thanks,” Duo says, almost too quiet to hear.

Wufei huddles into the armchair, half boiled with feeling at that one word. Duo visibly relaxes, picking up the thread of the movie again, pretending he has no idea that Wufei is doing anything different.

The feeling elongates into a discomfort that beer can’t assuage, until it gets too much to bear. Wufei acts before he can reconsider, taking the remote from the table and muting the TV.

“I don’t regret it,” he announces. “I’m not sitting here stewing in guilt. But, yes. It bothers me.” Wufei jerks his head towards the window. ”All that.”

Duo tilts his head and Wufei can see him shelving some of his thoughts and words for another day and another discussion. “The celebrations?”

“The celebrations,” Wufei agrees. “Because I keep wondering how long it will be before it’s just a party. Just a thin excuse for a piss up.”

Duo clinks their bottles together, and Wufei snorts at his irony.

“It’s only been a few years, and already I wonder if it was worth it.”

“But you don’t regret it?”

Wufei shakes his head. He’s spent a long time weighing it all up and he can only be honest about his conclusions. “No.”

“It’s only not worth it when you regret it,” Duo says, with such philosophy that Wufei is curious enough to ask,

“Do you regret Christmas?”

“It’s different. Similar, but not the same. I hate the emptiness of it, but no, I got no specific boo-hoo story about how someone or something pissed on my Christmas when I was a kid or anything like that. I mean, that happened, but I didn’t care at the time, so why should I care now? I just… I’d want it to have a real meaning, but I’ve never had any real sense of faith. Does that make sense?”

“Religious faith?”

“Faith in anything,” Duo says, generously. “Maybe I’m just jealous. All those good ideals in life gotta be real for some people...”

“Like peace?” Wufei asks, cynically.

Duo laughs. “Yeah, man. Contentment or something. Anyway… guess we live on the outside of all that. High time we got used to it; that inside feeling’s not for the likes of us.”

“Ahn…” Wufei agrees, not yet convinced. Duo tips his bottle up and after a beat, so does Wufei.

“I’m out. And I’m moving off the beer,” Duo declares, setting his empty down. He flicks the volume back on, but lowers it, moving them back into more neutral territory. “What else did you get from the store yesterday?”

Wufei sits up, suddenly remembering, and ducks out the lounge into his own rooms. “This,” he says, returning with a bottle, and something else, small and egg-shaped, which he holds up in his other hand. “And this.”

He tosses the egg across the table and it lands with a faint smack in Duo’s palm. A couple of ounces containing what might be a glimpse of life on the inside.

“What?” Duo asks.

“Happy December,” Wufei tells him, thumping his butt back into the armchair and fussing with the shot glasses. Duo’s still staring at the egg in his hand.

“No way.”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“No way! You found it?”

“You’re such a child,” Wufei snorts.

Duo’s already popped the egg open and discharged its contents into his hand, wrestling with the plastic innards. “You got the friggin sportscar?! Really? First go? Jeez, some guys have all the luck...’”

“Eh,” Wufei says dismissively, the hot feeling back in his chest, although this time newly without the prickling. “Just don’t put it on the dashboard.”

“I promise nothin’,” Duo crows, holding the toy up at eye level and beaming. “Ugh, I love it.”

Wufei shakes his head, pouring out shots. “You’re an embarrassment.”

“You’re a good friend,” Duo says, with warmth, and Wufei stares hard at the drink he’s pouring and thinks that, in the end, twenty dollars was not too much to pay for a stupid toy.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The plastic car wrecks are a niche thing that you can actually buy in Japan if you are so inclined.  
> 2) The cracker in the frozen Christmas dinner is the type that goes bang, but Wufei wouldn't have known this.  
> 3) Sexy burrito wall calendars surprisingly aren't a thing. Maybe in 2022.


End file.
